the long farewell

Rachel and I walked down the through the park this evening, and had a really good talk. We climbed the hill behind the vet school—it is kind of like climbing the dune so you can see the ocean.

I teased the mules saying, “You are sterile. Do you know what that means? You will never reproduce. They made you that way.”

And then after Rachel chided me and I reflected a bit I yelled over the fence, “You’re not missing much.”

Rachel and I also discussed our love of short stories. I like them because they are so compact and efficient. Rachel likes them because “they are so short, you can start reading them on the toilet and then finish them when you come back.”

To which I replied, “Gross.”

Then Rachel told me about a Brazilian grad student we knew last year that told her one time that reading on the toilet was bad saying, “Oh, don’t do that, it is bad for your sphincter.” She thought his statement was funny because he was Brazilian and he knew the word ‘sphincter’. I thought it was funny because he was a bottom—and worried about the well-being of his anus.